


Stand Your Ground

by whisper_that_dares



Category: Expeditionary Force (Books), Expeditionary Force Series - Craig Alanson, The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Aliens, Alternate Universe - Alien Invasion, Ammunition is Not Unlimited, BAMF Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Bees, Booker | Sebastien le Livre-centric, Cannibal Hamsters, Canon-Typical Profanity, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Comedy, Explicit Language, First Contact, Future Fic, Gen, Global Catastrophe, Google Streetview Tours, Hopeful Ending, Military mention, My First AO3 Post, Near Future, No Smut, Not Beta Read, POV Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Science Fiction, War, everyone either shows up briefly, or are only mentioned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-25 14:15:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30090354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whisper_that_dares/pseuds/whisper_that_dares
Summary: An Expeditionary Force/The Old Guard fusion, OR what was Booker up to on the day the aliens invaded?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	1. Once in a Lifetime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beware the cute fuzzy ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suspect most readers (hah, I'm making the assumption this gets any) will be coming in from The Old Guard tag, so what The Old Guard is will require no explanation.
> 
> There is no ExForce fandom on AO3. Like, I'm it and two other people. Maybe not even that many.
> 
> So here goes.
> 
> Expeditionary Force is a science fiction book series by Craig Alanson. It's the story of a guy from Maine and his beer can, his stolen alien spaceship, crewed by a merry band of pirates drawn from every major military organization on Earth, fighting off lizards, hamsters, kittens, and little green MF'ers across the galaxy.
> 
> I'll be the first to admit Expeditionary Force is definitely an acquired taste, and there's some problematic bits that Alanson doesn't cover for any number of reasons. My take on it here doesn’t follow Alanson’s version completely because of some of those problematic bits. But the books entertain me, and I want to go play in the sandbox he’s built. You can sample the first book "Columbus Day" on Amazon.com or the giant ebook retailer of your choice. YMMV.
> 
> This story, "Stand Your Ground," came about from wondering what some of my favorite characters would be doing during Chapter 1 of Book 1 of Expeditionary Force.
> 
> I haven’t written anything in a very long time and this is my first work on AO3. I hope the rust doesn’t show too much. I also usually don’t write other people’s characters, so any OOC-ness is mine. If you do decide to keep reading this from here on out, I thank and appreciate you. Enjoy the ride.

_ You wanna know what I think about everyone calling it Columbus Day? Seems like a perfectly good name to me. Yeah, yeah, I know that it’s called Indigenous People’s Day here in America, and I don’t have a beef with that, obviously, been the law for years now. Only old-timers and assholes still call it Columbus Day. But why’s it a good name for the day the Ruhar hit us? Cause we were all like my ancestors, just sitting pretty and minding our own goddamn business and suddenly this more technologically advanced bunch of fuck faces come sailing over the horizon and ruin everything for everyone. _

_ So yeah, Indigenous People’s Day for me, Columbus Day for everybody else.  _

_ — Daniel Many Beats, professor of microbiology and native activist _

  
  


An absolutely ridiculous memory played out in his mind, one about that time in the 1980s when the four of them needed to lay low after a job had gone south on them, and they’d hid out in Newark of all places. The apartment next door had been occupied by a single mother and her nine year-old son, named Shontarius, and much to Andy’s complete disapproval and the mother’s enthusiastic gratitude, Booker had ended up becoming the boy’s babysitter for the duration they were there.

During that time, with permission from the boy’s mother, they’d gone to a pet shop and Shontarius had picked out a hamster, along with all the starter accessories a hamster needed. It was a cute furry little thing, and seemed pretty harmless.

Unknown to them at the time, it was a girl hamster. And she’d already been knocked up before she’d even left the pet shop.

Two weeks later, Shontarius had yelled happily, “She’s got babies!” The boy pressed his face up against the cage bars, cooing at the hamster he’d named “Cher,” while Booker had wondered how he was going to explain to Shontarius’ mom how one hamster had suddenly become five hamsters. He managed it, somehow.

Two nights later, Shontarius woke him up from where he’d fallen asleep on the couch, crying in shock. “She’s eating them!” the boy shrieked.

Sure enough, Cher was eating her own babies. Later on, Booker learned cannibalism actually wasn’t uncommon behavior for captive hamsters, but nevertheless, after making sure all the guns, the edged weapons, and other suspicious bits and bobs were well secured, he hustled the hysterically crying child over next door where he could stay with Andy, Nicky, and Joe for the rest of the night.

(Booker had felt bad for Shontarius for years after and later researched his name to see what had become of the child. The boy had gotten a full-ride scholarship to a veterinary school and now ran his own clinic in Princeton.)

For some reason, he was now being reminded of Cher licking the blood of her babies off her round fuzzy face while he was being chased through a Provence vineyard by several two meter tall alien space hamsters wearing body armor and wielding these shiny guns that looked like they were from some shitty big budget science fiction movie.

And this day had been going so well, he thought with an eye roll. He kept running, the giant alien hamsters squeaking their outrage at his heels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from the song “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads.
> 
> The cannibal hamster thing actually happened to me in real life. I was eleven. 
> 
> Hamsters. Are. EVIL.


	2. Goodbye Blue Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Booker is too engrossed by his phone and almost misses the end of the world as we know it.

_ They say you always remember exactly where you were when something big happens. Granddad was having lunch at his job when he heard the news JFK was shot. I was in my fourth week of basic at Parris Island when we got the news the planes hit the towers in New York. And I was sitting right here at this desk when the Ruhar ships jumped into orbit. _

_ We didn’t find out until much, much later that Earth was never the target. No, we just happened to be innocent bystanders in a scuffle between the Ruhar and the Kristang. The Kristang were considering Earth as a forward base and the Ruhar decided they were going to preemptively deny them the use. They just didn’t care that someone was already living here. _

_ — Tyler Serrano, senior analyst, National Security Agency, United States  _

  
  


The day had started out decently enough with a phone call from Quỳnh.

She didn’t even say hello, and instead said in crisp Occitan, “I’m visiting your mountain.” The transatlantic phone call sounded clear and strong. It was the afternoon on a Monday in October, and Booker was on the downhill slope of Mallemort, with a scenic view of the river Durance before him, the chapel of St. Michel somewhere behind.

He huffed a snort. “For the record it’s not ‘my’ mountain, it’s just what everyone decided to call it later.”

“Andromache told me how absolutely no one was fooled by you claiming you were Belgian.”

He paused in his walk to shrug. “And everyone thought Joe was Mexican. He got really good at saying, ‘No soy mexicano.’ Did Nicky ever tell you the real story of how he lost all our money gambling,  _ and _ how he bet away all our gear, which led to me coming up with a brilliant plan to make a quick buck so we could finally get out of the fucking desert?”

“No, he didn’t, but I’m also not surprised. When we’re all back together, remind me to share the story about that time in Mombasa and how Nicky and finances don’t mix.”

They chatted a bit more, and then Quỳnh ended the call, saying she wanted to start her hike up the mountain, since it was some sort of public holiday in America and the trail might be busy later in the day.

Mallemort was a quaint little village that seemed stuck in time, much like him after a fashion. It wasn’t far from Marseille either, and while Mallemort was too far inland to have Marseille’s olfactory charm of salt, rotting fish, and seagull shit, he thought it wasn’t so bad once the tourists had cleared out for the season.

His phone pinged with an email from Nile, still in Nigeria. She and the others were still busy helping the locals out while the US-lead UN peacekeepers tried to keep the situation from devolving into full blown civil war. For some reason, “peacekeeping” always had a tendency to involve killing a lot of people, and the Americans were always slow at learning that they shouldn’t show up to an already unstable situation where they weren’t needed or wanted. No matter the endeavor, no group of people were more convinced that what was good for  _ les Amis  _ was also good for everyone else, and that they were always on the side of the angels. Nile seemed to be coming around to that it was so much bullshit, because her email started with, “ _ Fucking Americans _ .”

Booker felt more than a twinge of guilt that he wasn’t there, but it’d been some years since both he and Quỳnh had sworn off traveling to exotic locations, meeting strange new people, and killing them, even if there were perfectly valid reasons for doing so. 

Booker, when he had reflected on it, conceded he had never wanted to be a soldier, and had never wanted to kill anyone to begin with. It was a decision that had been forced upon him more than once through circumstance and desperation. Quỳnh’s return and support had given him the necessary courage to say no to Andy when she’d asked him to rejoin the team. Not dreaming of Quỳnh drowning every night had helped with finally putting down the bottle, although she’d given him a bit of an extra push with that.

For her part, Quỳnh was just tired and wanted to try some other way of putting some good into the world. She had found some peace working with abused and neglected animals, and was currently doing some sort of volunteer gig with an animal sanctuary in southeastern Utah. If that sometimes turned into extending a helping hand to the women and children escaping the polygamist religious cult in the region, well, no one was the wiser.

So he stayed on the home front, helping Copley out with covering the team’s tracks when necessary and then some. He updated his forged credentials and went back to teaching for a few years. Now he was taking a break from that by spending the summer and now the fall working as a field hand, picking grapes for the vintners in the hills around Mallemort.

He was stepping off on the other side of the modern  _ pont de mallemort  _ that straddled the Durance, walking north back to his rented farmhouse, when he hit the send button on his email back to Nile. He had echoed her wishes that they’d all be able to get back together for the December holidays. “Unable to send message, save for later?” his phone’s mail client dinged.

He stopped walking, frowned at his phone and pressed send again. Again, “Unable to send message, save for later?” He hadn’t paid much attention in the past but he was pretty sure his phone got three bars of signal out of four in this area normally. Now his phone showed no bars.

A blue Citroën zipped around a corner at high speed, nearly knocking him to the ground. The car screeched to a stop and he was about to yell at the driver when its window rolled down to reveal a wide-eyed middle-aged woman in a pink hijab.

“Excuse me, monsieur!” she called to him. She frantically pointed at the phone in his hand. “Are you getting a signal?”

“Eh? No,” he startled.

She muttered something very unkind, and punched the center of the steering wheel. The car window behind her rolled down then, and a young teenage boy stuck his head out to look at Booker.

“It’s because of the aliens,” the boy said, completely deadpan.

“Uh.” Booker didn’t know how to respond to that. How did anyone? Did that kid just say “aliens” as in  _ extraterrestrials _ ?

“Ahmed, we don’t have time for this — “ the woman in the front driver’s seat warned.

“But mama, I saw it on a news livestream on the Internet before the power went out!” The boy’s voice rose to an unpleasant whine. “The aliens blew up the airport in Strasbourg and bombed Winnipeg!”

He felt strangely relieved because it all made sense now. The kid had learned about an alien invasion from that font of wisdom, the Internet. And Booker had been to Winnipeg, Canada before. That meant whatever garbage this kid had been watching online couldn’t possibly be true because, realistically, who would want to attack  _ Winnipeg _ ? Well, he’d lived through one War of the Worlds broadcast already, and clearly this was just an updated one for the Internet age.

The woman was looking at Booker as if  _ he _ were the crazy one here. “Didn’t you see the lights in the sky?” And she pointed a finger up and back behind him.

Of course, he turned and looked.

Oh. Oh.  _ Ohhh _ . Oh  _ SHIT _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from the song “Goodbye Blue Sky” by Pink Floyd.
> 
> Mallemort is a real place and I tried to stay true to the geography as much as possible. It becomes important later on. Google Streetview is awesome. Ahmed’s mom’s Citroën can be seen on the road in one of the Streetview captures. Check it out sometime.
> 
> The mountain Quỳnh mentions is also real, and is called Frenchman Mountain. It’s the tallest peak on the east side of the Las Vegas Valley. The details differ but the basic story is that in 1905 or 1912, a Belgian man came to town claiming he’d struck gold under the mountain and even produced several gold “nuggets” as proof. He and/or a mining company sold fake mining claims for the next two years, scamming potential prospectors out of their money. Everyone mistook the Belgian guy for being French and began calling the mountain “The Frenchman’s Mountain.” It was later shortened to Frenchman Mountain. A geological survey in the 1960s turned up nothing valuable under the mountain.
> 
> How Copley missed this no one will ever know.
> 
> I had Quỳnh volunteer at a real place, the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah. I figure she might find comfort with working with animals. Unlike humans, they don't set out to deceive or be deliberately cruel to one another, and often end up suffering because humans do those things. Since Quỳnh suffered because of human cruelty and deception, she might find something in common with the animals. The Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints are in the region too. Allegedly, things have gotten better since their "prophet" went to jail, but I bet Quỳnh's bullshit-o-meter is well trained after millennia.


	3. Hey Man, Nice Shot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Booker demands an explanation for this bullsh*t.

_ Furries were never popular before the Ruhar invaded. We became less popular after that. _

_ — Mariko Yamada, furry cosplayer, Japan _

  
  


Booker wasn’t sure how long he stood by the side of the road, his jaw somewhere at asphalt level, his brain frozen in disbelief and panic. At some point, Ahmed’s mom had made a small noise of disgust and the Citroën sped off in the same general direction he’d been walking.

His first instinct, after staring witlessly for an interminable time, was to check his phone to try to reach Copley, or somebody, or  _ anybody _ , and then kicking himself for forgetting there wasn’t any signal. Worry gnawed at him for not being able to know if everyone else was safe. Were they able to see what was going on from whatever part of the world they were in? He needed to hear a familiar voice, all of their voices, and hear that they would all come through okay no matter what and they would all be together again soon.

His second instinct had been to feel for the gun he still carried in the back of his waistband. While he avoided violence whenever possible, it didn’t mean he didn’t have an out-sized and healthy sense of paranoia. Andy had told him more than once he really should dump his faithful Jericho 941 pistol since it still wasn’t a common sidearm, therefore making it both identifiable and traceable. He almost fumbled the magazine to check the ammo, and found it fully loaded with sixteen 9mm rounds.

His third instinct was to wonder why the hell he was even bothering with that, since it wasn’t like he could actually  _ do _ anything useful with the gun. Or maybe with any human-made gun for that matter. If the aliens were capable of traveling between stars, would a gun even impress them?

His fourth instinct was to feel shamefully grateful that apparently all the alien invasion movies were right, and some place like Mallemort was too insignificant to attract any hostile attention. Did the aliens really blow up Winnipeg, though? What did Winnipeg do to deserve something like that, anyway?

His fifth instinct was to notice the bright burning streak across the sky. Unlike the other alien spaceships which seemed to be firing on each other so far above Earth’s surface that he couldn’t hear anything, the burning streak was too close for comfort and rapidly getting closer.

He had read somewhere that electrical impulses in the human brain traveled at approximately one meter per second. If that was true, then the sensory overload had tripped his circuit breakers. Because all he could do was stand riveted to the spot as the alien ship — clearly on fire and trailing inky black smoke — came screaming in over the smooth expanse of the Durance.

The ship’s momentum splintered the old wooden bridge, and bricks from the ancient towers were flung into the river and on the surrounding roads. Survival mode finally kicked in and Booker yelped in fear and surprise, throwing himself into the roadside ditch and shielding his head.

Then it clipped the underside of the modern concrete bridge and went into a tailspin. With another enormous, earth-shaking crash, the alien ship buried part of itself into the flat floodplain on the north riverbank of the Durance. The same side of the river Booker happened to be on because of course it did.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, he looked up over the edge of the ditch at the still smoking craft. A hatch on the upper hull suddenly popped open, and what definitely looked like a missile hissed out of its launch tube and into the air. There wasn’t much in Mallemort, come to think of it, so the aliens must have decided the most architecturally impressive structure in the area also had to be the most strategically important. 

The Chapel of St. Michel went up in a fiery blast.

It was at this point Booker decided that all of this — the space aliens, the power outage, not being able to contact anyone, Winnipeg — was completely unacceptable.

Joe had half-joked that on those occasions Booker was motivated by sheer, overwhelming moral outrage, one should never, ever, get between him and his intended target.

He saw every shade of red at once and then some. Sliding his trusty Jericho from his waistband, he stood and approached the craft. He had sixteen bullets, and if he had to shoot he was going to make each of them count for something. Hadn’t that been in a line in that movie with that Austrian fellow? _ If it bleeds, we can kill it. _

A hatch on the underside scraped open, and Booker ducked out of line of sight, using the craft's body to shield him. There was a sound like coughing, and three figures stumbled from the ship and onto the riverbank. 

Well, they looked kind of human? Two arms, two legs, and one head. They wore some sort of thick body armor and helmets. One of them fell to its knees and reached up to yank the helmet off its head, and Booker got his first look at one of the alien bastards.

Upon reflection much, much later, he wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. These weren’t human beings after all. But fur, beady dark eyes, and prominent incisors like a rat hadn’t been it. Their round faces made them look more like teddy bear hamsters, though. They even squeaked at each other.

Under different circumstances, they could be almost … cute? If cute was two meters tall, wearing high tech armor, carrying things that looked like obvious firearms, and God only knew what else. The golden-furred one that had taken its helmet off doubled over and vomited on the riverbank.

The other half of Joe’s joke was that when Booker was motivated by sheer, overwhelming moral outrage, Booker didn’t think. He just  _ did _ .

The best jokes always had a grain of truth to them.

“Hey! Hey, you! Fuzzy face!” he yelled at the one being sick all over the shore. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” All three aliens turned to look at him as he stormed towards them. They seemed more bewildered than hostile at this primitive local hurling verbal abuse at them, but what did Booker know about reading alien body language. He stepped up close, jabbed an accusing finger at the aliens and continued his tirade.

“You motherfuckers come in here, blow up everything, knock over all our shit, and you furry shit heads don’t care who gets hurt! You should be ashamed of yourselves! You’re so fucking disrespectful! And you’re puking all over the place! Get back in your flying Habitrail and  _ get the fuck off my planet _ , you son of a bitch!”

The sable one looked appropriately abashed, although Booker was pretty sure it didn’t understand a single word being yelled at it. Maybe being really fucking pissed off was universally understood across the cosmos. The grey furred one with the white blaze, however …

It bared its incisors and before Booker could properly regret not thinking his strategy through, leveled its gun and shot him in the chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from “Hey Man, Nice Shot” by Filter. Personally, I prefer the Joseph William Morgan cover to the original.
> 
> Booker carries a Jericho 941, a semi-automatic Israeli-made pistol, for no reason at all except that it amuses me. It’s also the same make and model of gun Spike Spiegel uses.


	4. Bullet With Butterfly Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Booker didn’t know that First Contact would be this hard.

_ The Mosul Hydroelectric Dam had been threatening to collapse for years. First, it was built on top of gypsum which dissolves in water. Then the Americans invaded in 2003 and the rebels threatened to blow it up, and then ISIS took over about ten years later. It wasn’t good for maintaining the dam, as you can imagine. It was already weak. _

_ The Ruhar didn’t bother with attacking the big cities. Yes, I saw pictures of New York and Kalkota, and they weren’t touched when the rats started shooting. No, their targets were transportation hubs and power generating infrastructure instead. Like Mosul Dam. _

_ All the power was out. We couldn’t warn all the people living downstream in time. It’s why I signed up for UNEF. Inshallah, someone has to make the rats pay. _

_ — Fatima al-Faraj, civil engineer, Iraq, UNEF recruit _

  
  


Once upon a time, after consuming a copious amount of absinthe, the little green fairy had loosened Booker’s tongue. This had resulted in him loudly declaiming to a Parisian salon filled with aspiring writers, artists, and artistes that if God were a novelist, then He was a shit writer who had no grasp of plot or storytelling. No, His greatest talent was being an asshole to His characters.

Well. God was definitely writing like an asshole again.

This was the first thought that occurred to Booker as dead nerves twitched and flickered back to life. His chest didn’t just hurt, it fucking  _ burned _ . He wanted to curl up against the pain, maybe even cry a little, but he forced himself to hold still.

He could feel the rough soil of the riverbank under him, and smell the acrid burning odor coming from the alien craft. And he could hear what sounded like angry squeaking, like the kind of noise a dog toy might make during vigorous chewing. He cracked open an eye and tried to pinpoint the source.

The hamsters had moved away from where his body had fallen, thinking him dead and therefore harmless. The bulk of their disabled craft was between them and any possible observers who might be watching from Mallemort on the other side of the river. And with the bridges out and the village on fire, he doubted anyone one was coming fast. 

Sable appeared to be doing most of the yelling, which was directed at Blaze. It pointed in Booker’s direction without looking at him and continued the diatribe. Blaze responded with a surly grunt, and Booker wondered if it was hamster-ese for “Yeah, whatever.” Goldie sat on the riverbank, hands clutching its chubby cheeks and moaning.

Geniuses of the Hamster Space Force these guys were clearly not.

Now, though, Booker had to decide what to do, and quickly.

He could make a break for it, and pray that Blaze wasn’t as good of a shot the second time. Hopefully, just getting up and running like hell would spook the hamsters into inaction. It was something that had worked for Booker in the past; with luck, it’d work again.

Another valid option was to keep playing dead.

Then a tiny but persistent part of his brain wondered if the hamsters would get hungry and he was an obvious and immediate source of protein. It wasn’t like he had any idea what they preferred to eat. Would they be satisfied with alfalfa and pellets?

But if he ran, well, what if they thought that was a normal human thing? The healing-up dead-suddenly-not-dead resurrecting thing and not the running thing.

The Jericho was still in his hand, its weight familiar like an old friend.

He thought about it a bit more and concluded:  _ Fuck it _ .

Three bullets hit the trigger-happy wacko, Blaze, first. Two shots to the center of mass, and a third shot aimed higher. Red blood gushed between its fingers as it gasped and grabbed at a tender spot under its jaw Booker’s lucky shot had hit.

Goldie’s enraged shriek made his ears ring and he supposed that would translate to something like, “You’re dead! You’re supposed to be dead!” Booker’s fourth bullet pinged off of Goldie’s body armor.

A sledgehammer blow hit him in his left shoulder, spinning him to the hard ground. He managed to keep his grip on the Jericho in his right hand, as he blinked through the pain. Sable sighted down a pistol-equivalent at him and chittered. His body bucked as the furry alien fired two more shots into his back. 

Then he was rolling back to his feet, the Jericho’s muzzle aimed not-quite point blank at Sable’s face. A rather distant corner of his mind noted that the alien hamster’s facial expression of surprise mirrored the human one, one of a slack jaw and bulging eyes as he charged.

They both fired at the same time.

Booker’s first shot ricocheted off of Sable’s armor, but the second found its mark. A long gash opened up on its right cheek, the bullet leaving a trail of blood and fur in its wake.

Something clobbered him in the head, smacking him on his left temple. He saw stars and staggered but didn’t fall. Instead he let his momentum carry him forward. With his good right shoulder, he body-slammed the creature. It was like running into a cinder block wall, and he was sure something else was now broken. Sable made a sound like “Oof!” as he knocked it off balance.

(Booker wondered if Sable was a male or a female, or if human genders were simply inapplicable. Asking a fucking _hostile_ _space alien_ what pronouns were appropriate to use was not very high on his priority list at the moment.)

He grabbed its wrist and twisted and learned to his surprise and grim satisfaction, disarming a hamster worked the same way as it did for humans.

_ Look who’s the inferior species now!  _ he thought triumphantly, and pressed the same trigger-equivalent he’d seen Sable use.

And … nothing. 

Clickety click clickety.

Of course there’d be some sort of biometric lock on it or something like that because this was kind of shit that always happened because he wasn’t Andy, or Joe, or Nicky, or Quỳnh, or Nile. No, because he was  _ Booker _ .

Sable looked up at him curiously from where it had landed on its fuzzy ass on the ground. Meanwhile, during all this Goldie had gotten to Blaze’s side, and had applied some sort of first aid patch to the wound on the grey-furred one’s throat. Naturally, as the fates would have it, the trigger-happy wacko was just winged, not dead.

Sable chirruped something and pointed a gloved finger at Booker’s head. Tentatively, still not letting go of either gun, he touched his cheek. It came away tacky with blood and, well, some brains too. Um. Part of his skull was missing. Booker guessed that, like for humans, it was absolutely not the norm for hamsters either to be still standing while one’s brains were literally dribbling out. Not to mention, the gaping hole Blaze had put in his torso had healed back up seamlessly. His torn and blood-soaked shirt gave that away.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, deciding to back away. “This is normal here, you see, ahhh, we humans do this sort of thing all the time.” Sable must have not been buying this, because it turned to Blaze and Goldie and squeaked something that Booker would bet good money on that would translate to, “You guys seeing this shit too?”

Blaze staggered to its booted feet and growled, genuinely growled for real. It hefted its rifle and at this point, Booker decided it was the better part of valor to just run like hell.

He turned and fled, three aliens screaming bloody murder at his retreating back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” by the Smashing Pumpkins. It’s quintessentially angry/depressed Booker, in my opinion.


	5. Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Booker f*cking swears a lot.
> 
> To get the full effect of this chapter, you should read it out loud. Read it out loud to your reflection. Your house plants. Your cat. Your priest at your next confession. You do you.

_I never imagined calling someone’s mum a hamster would turn into actual fighting words._

_— Anonymous, United Kingdom_

  
  
Shit shit merde merde fuck shit fucking fuck mierda fuck fuck fuck shit schiesse shit shit shit shit shit fuck mierda merda fuck fuck shit дерьмо oh fuck oh fuck fuck fucking fuckity fuck shite fuck fuck shit shit shit shit shit shit fuck shit fuck merde fuck shit shit shit דרעק shit fuck shit fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck schiesse shit shit shit fuck shit дерьмо shit shit shit fuck shit merda shit fuck fuck shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit דרעק shit ow shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit fucking fuck tabernac fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck shitski fuck oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck shit mierda shit fuck shit shit shit fuck shit shit shit fuck shit shit shit shit shit fuck merde shit argh shit shit shit fuck shit shit ow fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck shite shite merda shitty shit shit shit oh fucking fuck schiesse shit shit shit what the fuck oh shit fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck tabernac fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck shit oh shit oh shit oh shit shit shit oh shit shit merde merde דרעק merde merde merde merde merde fuck shit fuck shit oh fuck дерьмо fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck shit shit shit shit oh fuck no shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit fuck ow fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck merda fuck fuck fucktity fuck shit argh no schiesse this shit again shit shit shit fuck shit shit shit shit shit shit fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit fuck fuck fuck fuck shit fuck shit shit _putain de merde._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I needed to psych myself up for the back half of this fic, and it ended up being a homage to Chapter 56 of “All Our Wrong Todays” by Elan Mastai. It’s also more or less me on the freeway at peak traffic hours. This is 300+ words of profanity in English, Italian, German, Québécois French, Spanish, French, Russian, and Yiddish. 
> 
> At least Booker has that all out of his system now, but he’s definitely not in a better place for it. Chapter Six will be up shortly.
> 
> The chapter title comes from the Smiths song of the same name, and yet another song that reminds me of a certain depressed Occitan rat man.


	6. We All Lift Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody puts Booker in the corner, except Booker.

_Join the United Nations Expeditionary Force! Defend Your World and Hit the Ruhar With Everything We’ve Got! See Your Nearest Recruitment Office and Enlist Today! Your Planet is Depending on You!_

_— UNEF Recruitment poster_

  
  


Sébastien Le Livre was a man without a plan.

This, in itself, was not actually an unusual state of affairs for him. One could draw a straight line from the time he was an eight year-old taking a purloined cooper’s barrel for a joyride down Marsellie’s steep streets and right into the harbor, to getting caught forging port permits and cargo inventories and manumission papers and being drafted into the Grande Armeé for it all, to all the shit that went down in Russia that lead to dangling at the end of a noose for three days. All the way down to the whole sordid mess with Merrick.

He’d never been some towering intellect at thinking ahead about the consequences of his actions. Jeannette had loved him anyway.

What he did know right now is that he had absolutely no desire at this very moment to end up a prisoner or worse at the mercy of anyone, human or alien. The hamsters had seen him heal, and Booker didn’t want to stick around and find out what they planned to do about it.

This was how he had come to this point, running like a manic through a Provence vineyard, with three two meter tall giant space hamsters hard on his heels. A boom from behind him obliterated a stand of perfectly good Grenache grapevines. The good part was his immortal physiology gave him an edge at keeping exhaustion at bay when running at full tilt, although it wasn’t something he could do indefinitely. The bad part was the hamsters didn’t seem to be getting all that tired either. Even Blaze seemed to be doing pretty well for someone who’d been shot in the neck.

He’d shot twice more behind him when he’d fled the riverbank, and now he was down to eight bullets — half a magazine — in his Jericho. All the rest of the ammo was back in his rented farm house. He’d never thought to carry more than one clip of small caliber bullets on his person because he’d never planned on needing something more while relaxing in Provence. As well-developed as his paranoia was, bringing along large caliber armor piercing ammunition on vacation had seemed like overkill.

So he kept running.

Unfortunately, this was the flat floodplain north of the Durance, with no nearby convenient cliffs to throw himself off of, and he was running in the wrong direction to go back and drown himself in the river. He was surrounded by farmland and vineyards, and he was going to have to find some other way of shaking his pursuers.

At least the grapevine trellises were providing some sort of cover here, although not nearly as much as he’d like. A stone fence loomed in front of him, and he jumped it and into a pasture. He landed awkwardly, feeling his ankle twist and untwist itself, and looked up to find he was being stared down by a herd of cows.

Contrary to popular belief, cows were not nice, harmless, docile creatures. Well, they could be, but it was never a given. That little bitch named Evolution had gifted them horns and hooves for a reason, and no amount of human meddling had really changed that. One of the cows closest to him mooed, apparently deciding he was a threat, lowered its head and charged at him. And the rest of the cows, being herd animals, all followed its lead.

Booker had all of half a second to yell, “Fuck!” before a hoof cracked one of his ribs. A horn gored him in the thigh. This wouldn’t be his first time being stomped to death by angry cows, but of all the inconvenient times for it to happen, it had to be now.

He heard a high-pitched squeal of surprise and between all the hoof stomps, he could see one of the hamsters had followed him over the fence and blundered right into the herd of enraged cows. The cows didn’t seem impressed by Blaze’s high tech body armor or gun, and the alien hamster went down under crushing hooves and tossing horns.

But the herd had its attention diverted now, which was all Booker needed. Scrabbling on hands and knees, he hauled himself back over the fence, feeling the bruises, cuts, and broken bones knitting back together. He risked a glance as he climbed over. Goldie and Sable appeared to be trying to rescue Blaze without shooting up the cows, probably because doing so could also put Blaze in the direct line of fire. Goldie must have seen movement out of the corner of its eye because it elbowed Sable, pointed at the human and squeaked something.

Booker took a moment to flip it the bird. And then he was off running again.

He didn’t get very far this time, no more than a few steps, because he saw something that gave him an idea. It wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever had but it was still a really, really, _really_ fucking stupid and terrible idea. But it was an idea nonetheless.

This vineyard, like many of the others around here, had an apiary. Or in less technical terms, bee boxes. 

_Whatever works_.

He took careful aim with his Jericho, lining up the front sight at one of the bee boxes, and squeezed the trigger.

_Bam!_ The wood of the bee box splintered and broke. The normally pleasant hum of the bees took on a decidedly more concerned pitch. 

Without lowering his gun, he began edging towards the white metal prefab outbuilding that was a few meters away from the bee boxes. Its door hung open, like someone inside had cleared out in a hurry. He aimed at another box and fired again.

_Bam!_ The bees were now Officially Concerned.

Booker pulled out the alien gun from his ruined denim jacket and tossed it in the dirt in front of the outbuilding door. He was maybe a little less than sixty meters away, but he could see Goldie and Sable still struggling with the cows, occasionally glancing his way. Good. He sighted down a third bee box and fired his gun.

_Bam!_ The bees were now humming, “Holy shit, dude, we’re under attack!” They boiled out of their boxes in a big black angry whirling mass that might have been mistaken for a small, very localized, thunderstorm.

Booker thought to himself, _I am never, ever letting Joe find out about this._ He aimed his gun at a fourth box filled with innocent bees.

_Bam!_

Booker dove for the outbuilding door and slammed it closed behind him as hard and as loud as he could. He put his back up against the door, slid down it and gulped in air, gasping like a landed fish. 

Four bullets left.

He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of a shaking hand and looked around him. The outbuilding housed the vineyard’s honey production operation, it looked like.

Glass jars filled with golden honey lined one wall on a wire shelf and Booker could see tanks, vats, and electric honey extractors. Several lidded metal pails sat on the floor and he experimentally lifted one to find it was full. Tools like pickaxes, spades, shears and shovels hung from hooks or leaned up against the wall. He flipped the switch on a honeycomb extractor and it remained silent. Right, the power was out.

He glanced outside the dirty window. Three hulking figures were walking towards the outbuilding. Or rather Blaze had managed to get back up from its unfortunate encounter with the cows and was now stomping its way towards the building and Booker, with Sable and Goldie trailing behind. Neither of the latter two seemed particularly enthusiastic. All three hamsters had the faceplates down on their helmets. Fuck, what did it take to kill one of those things?

The bees would only buy him a little time, if any at all. Well, he hadn’t shot up their hives to buy time, not really. All the noise he’d made definitely meant the hamsters couldn’t miss where he was hiding. No, no, this was just the beginning.

Booker wrapped his Jericho into a piece of clean trash can liner before tucking it into his waistband and slipped on a pair of beekeepers gloves. Then he grabbed a full pail of honey in each hand, stopping only long enough to pry the lids off. He sent a silent prayer to the goddess Andy had been once worshipped as, and ducked behind one of the extractors and out of the line of sight.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Maybe they used a grenade or a small bomb because the outbuilding door blew off its hinges. Blaze, that trigger-happy wacko, stalked in, wreathed in smoke, grass, cow manure, and angry bees. Its body armor looked much worse for the wear and its lips were peeled back from its big buck teeth in an almost human-like sneer. 

Booker could feel his balls trying to climb up into his stomach, anywhere to a place of safety. But there wasn’t one.

Blaze came in with its rifle high, Goldie low and slightly behind the furry maniac, gun drawn. Sable brought up the rear, the pistol that Booker had stolen and then left on the ground now back in its hands.

_Tres._

Blaze stepped further into the interior, rifle muzzle swinging left to right and back again, its finger resting on the trigger guard.

_Dos._

Goldie also held a rifle. Its fingers shifted uneasily on the pistol grip, its breathing clearly nervous and hard. Sable covered their six, its gun and eyes sweeping the apiary and the destroyed bee boxes outside of the building.

_Un._

Roaring pure, wordless, primal rage, Booker lunged out from his hiding place, an arc of sweet, sweet honey briefly catching the afternoon light before splattering all over Blaze’s faceplate and rifle.

The giant hamster clawed at its helmet faceplate, trying to clean the sticky mess off and only making it worse by smearing it everywhere. Its rifle fired wildly, hitting an extractor full of wooden beehive frames. Shrapnel and even more honey sprayed around the room, but Booker was still moving.

He saw Goldie shrieking behind its helmet only briefly because he threw the other still-full bucket directly at Goldie’s faceplate. The bucket’s contents hit Goldie dead-on, blinding it. It dripped down the armored suit, getting into the joints, and covering its chest and rifle with sticky goop. Goldie’s gun roared, and more bits of metal shrapnel and honeycomb peppered everything. Then it jammed, the honey gumming up the rifle’s innards.

That left the last of the furry trio, Sable. It fired its pistol at him twice, and Booker felt pain bloom across his chest. He snatched a loaded honeycomb frame from the inside of another extractor and charged at Sable. It fired at him one more time and missed, and somewhere behind him Booker could hear glass breaking and then he was smashing the frame over Sable’s helmet faceplate. 

Smearing beeswax and honey all over him, the hamster grappled him, trying to throw him off balance and onto the floor. Goo dripped into Booker’s eyes. Sable’s gun landed in an ever-widening viscous puddle. Booker jammed his elbow into the alien’s solar plexus once, twice, three times, and then finally hard enough that Booker felt his own arm break. Sable let go. He staggered forward and barely avoided falling into the congealing honey. Sable was not so fortunate and the big alien tumbled onto the floor and the growing mess.

He clambered on top of a steel work table, which groaned and creaked under his sudden weight. His arm bones were already pulling back together. Both of the other hamsters had dropped their now useless guns and were struggling to get their helmets off, only to be hampered by all the honey clinging to them. Of the two, Blaze was the furthest away, near some storage and refrigeration tanks.

Goldie, however, was standing next to the wire shelves filled with glass jars of honey. It yanked its helmet off at last with an audible gasp.

_Oh no you don’t_ , thought Booker. He shed the beekeepers gloves and whipped the Jericho out, its protective plastic shroud falling away. He fired. 

_Bam! Bam! Bam!_ Glass and sticky honey rained down, Booker’s shots shattering jars and flinging their contents everywhere. Goldie made a small, pathetic squeak of dismay as the honey splashed down all over it and onto the fur of its exposed face. It jammed its fists into its eyes, trying to wipe the gunk out and flailing.

That was going to be a real bitch to wash out all that fur.

He had one last bullet.

He fired over his shoulder at the refrigeration tank nearest Blaze. Even without electricity, the gas was still pressurized. A stream of freon escaped the puncture hole in the tank. Blaze jerked in surprise, interrupting its attempts to get its helmet off. But Booker was already moving again.

He tossed his now-empty and useless gun aside and jumped. His shoes squelched uncomfortably on the honey-covered concrete floor. He grabbed the side of the wire shelf and _pulled_. 

Goldie squealed in pain and horror as the entire shelf — still heavy with honey jars that weren’t broken yet — came crashing down on top of it with a great tinkling of shattering glass. It did not attempt to get up again.

Two down, one to go. No time to rest. Booker pulled a pickaxe off of its wall hooks and, doing his best to ignore the sucking sound his shoes made, he hurtled himself towards the remaining alien, Blaze, pickaxe raised high.

Blaze had pulled off one armored glove and was tugging at the strap that kept the helmet connected to the rest of its armor when the flat of the pickaxe caught it on the side of the head. It grunted and reeled from the blow and then blindly lashed out at Booker with a kick. Booker danced out of the way easily, and then whipped his improvised weapon around and caught its leg with the head of the pickaxe. Using it like a hook, he yanked on Blaze’s extended limb and pulled. Blaze toppled and fell backwards, the back of its helmet making a loud thud as it struck the hard concrete floor.

With all his strength, he brought down the flat side of the pickaxe into Blaze’s helmet faceplate. _Wham! Wham! Wham!_ Spiderweb cracks finally appeared in whatever high tech material the faceplate was made out of, and Booker bashed the wooden handle of the pickaxe across Blaze’s helmet for good measure. The alien lay on the floor, limp and still.

Booker slumped against a wall, breathing hard, his entire body trembling as the adrenaline crash began. He surveyed the damage and the congealing puddles of honey and the three unmoving bodies of the hamster aliens. Goo stuck to his hair and skin. Maybe only a minute had passed since the building’s door had been blown off, if even that.

He sighed, and muttered to no one in particular, “Well, shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from the song “We All Lift Together” by Keith Power for the Warframe soundtrack.
> 
> I figure Booker’s fighting style of “whatever works” would include figuring out creative ways to turn his environment to his advantage. Leave Booker to his own devices and, if he puts his mind to it, he will get all “Home Alone” on his opponent.
> 
> The inspiration for honey as a weapon came from hearing a story that involved a marine fire team, several cases of cheap off-brand soda from Wal-Mart, a box cutter, and a water balloon slingshot. Things got messy and it sounded exactly like the sort of thing Booker would improvise on the fly.
> 
> Booker uses Occitan for his countdown.
> 
> I also fudged things a bit here for drama. 9mm caliber ammunition is unlikely to do that much damage to a bee box, not impossible but unlikely. The bees would probably still be upset at being shot at.
> 
> I can't figure out how to do links in this section, so if you're curious about how large-scale honey harvesting works, do a search for "Honls' Honey Extraction" on YouTube. See also "Processing over 6,000 pounds of honey in less than 8 hours" on the Jeff Horchoff Bees channel.
> 
> Booker will never play the baklava game with Andy and Nicky ever again. If he never has or sees any honey again in his immortal life, it will be too soon.


End file.
